


Before Manhattan

by Deannie



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, OFC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1996-08-15
Updated: 1996-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1900110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young woman in Arizona who's afraid to go outside and a group of suicides in Michigan lead Mulder and Scully to a frightening scheme to keep the silence about the truth behind alien abductions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Features my OFC and OMC Sal Menschner and Brian Callahan, who appear in many of my other early X-Files stories.

_Lake Nanekkonke, Michigan  
August 1, 1996_

His legs were perfect for long distance running, and the man put them to best use tonight. Heedless of the branches that scratched at him, uncaring of the many falls he took, he ran as if the hounds of Hell were on his heels.

In a way, they were.

He finally broke out of the woods, standing, panting, at the lakeshore, almost spent--and still no closer to safety.

At least he'd gotten the information out in time. How they had known where he was was beyond him, but at least he'd had enough warning to get the files out of his hands and into safer ones.

For he knew his own were far from safe. He wasn't going to live the night--not if they had anything to say about it. But that didn't mean he was going to make it easy on them.

Like a shadow, the frightening bulk of a man appeared at the woods' edge. He was ugly--his face scarred and bull-jawed. He was the type to frighten young children.

What he held in his hand was even more terrifying.

"Where are the files?" he asked, his voice a deep, horrifying baritone. He stepped closer, confident that the tall man before him could do nothing to stop him.

Indeed, he couldn't. And he knew it. The one satisfaction he would have was that, when he died, the location of those files would die with him. "They're gone. They're in the hands of the others, now." He drew himself up, making his last minutes in this world have  _some_  meaning. "You'll never find them."

The bull-jawed man came closer, and the tall man backed up. He'd reached the end, he knew, when he stood, backed against an old rotting log, right at the lakeshore.

"I will find those files," the man assured him, coming up close, the horror of his face now all that his hapless victim could see. "And when I find them, the man who has them will die as well."

The man before him made one more futile gesture at fighting for his life. As he tried to bolt past the giant before him, he felt himself caught and slammed face first into the old log. He heard the deadly whish of the icepick sliding out of its holder.

He never felt the shaft as it entered his skull.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
August 15, 1996_

Sarah Anderson was an unexceptional woman in her late twenties. She was about five feet, nine inches tall--neither too tall, nor too short. Her long hair, which  _was_  in fact a bit unusual in that it was a fascinating mix of brown and black and red, was nonetheless given an unexceptional cast by the fact that she kept it braided unimaginatively in a rope that dropped down her unexceptional back, all the way to her waist. Her eyes, an attractive, if slightly washed-out, blue-grey, were not exceptionally large, nor exceptionally luminous, nor even exceptionally expressive, and were, at any rate, hidden by thick coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Her skin was clear, but neither china doll-white, nor healthfully rosey.

She was not at all overweight, and had moderately pleasing curves, but she was neither perfectly proportioned and Pamela Anderson-beautiful nor waifish and supermodel-alluring. Perhaps a upgrade from her frumpy and shape-masking wardrobe might have made her appear a bit more beautiful, contacts might have improved the unmade look of her face--but neither change was likely to do much good. She was, in all, a very regular-looking woman.

Sitting down to have a conversation with Sally was a bit like talking to dust. She was bright, witty--but not self-assured enough to prove either claim. So she would sit in virtually total silence through the most heated of discussions that might go on around her.

 

She had been living in Rattleby, Arizona for nearly two weeks now, and the only people she had managed to meet were the landlady who had unlocked her new apartment, and the cashier at the local diner, where she had eaten dinner her first night in town. She had said perhaps ten words to each in her thirteen days of residence.

Sally did not have a job which required her to go to an office every day--which was, of course, by design. She was a researcher for a television show--which might have been seen as a moderately exciting occupation, had she had the courage to speak with someone long enough for it to be mentioned.

She left her apartment grudgingly, and usually only after she had missed two or three meals because the cupboards were bare. When this happened, she generally waited until three or four in the morning, taking one of the few taxis that Rattleby sported, to run out to an all-night grocery store just outside of town. The place was set up for truckers and traveling families, but its solitude and anonymity suited the girl's disposition. She didn't seem to find this at all strange, though her new landlady had asked her about it in hushed and pitying tones. "Sally, dear... Don't you ever want to just go out and take a walk in the sun?"

"Lots of work to do," she had replied quietly, looking as if she hoped it had sounded breezy and using up five of her ten allotted words in this--for her--drawn-out conversation with the old woman.

 

Her landlady's name was Caroline Thurber. She was sixty-eight; a widow, a four-time mother, a twelve-time grandmother--and a woman who prided herself on being able to read other people's needs.

Sarah needed to get out, in Caroline's opinion. She needed to meet people, to feel that she had friends. She needed to feel that she was not alone--which was what Caroline percieved to be the girl's  _real_  problem. She felt alone in this new town. She knew no one, and was therefore afraid to chance going out at all.

What Caroline did not understand was that Sarah had only recently become as she was. She had once been a vigorous, quick-witted, brilliant young woman, with caring friends, a doting family, a devoted boyfriend. All that had changed shortly before she moved into her tiny little third-floor apartment.

Caroline Thurber would never have guessed the real reasons behind Sally's transformation.

And she would never have believed that she would become caught up in such a frightening series of events--simply because of her worry over one introverted young woman.

* * *

_August 18, 1996_

Caroline had come into the halls early on this quiet Sunday morning, intent upon polishing every inch of wood and brass in the demurely adorned public areas of the five floor apartment building that was her domain. It was her custom. Every month, on the third Sunday.

She would begin at seven-thirty in the morning, and by five-fifteen that evening, the banisters and light fixtures would glow with cleanliness and the halls would be filled with the fresh invigorating scent of pine.

By twelve-thirty, she had reached the area of the third-floor hallway that directly faced the door of the timid little mouse she had taken to calling Honey. Sally was rarely--in truth,  _never_ \--seen in the halls, but Caroline made it her business to drop in on the girl at least once a week--"Just to see how you're doing, Honey."

Sally never seemed to mind her dropping in, but Caroline felt that the child was often subtly relieved when her landlady brought the visits to an end. She would stand quietly at the door, thanking the woman who called herself her friend with a brief nod of her head. She rarely spoke during the hour or so that Caroline would stay, but Caroline was well-known as a talker, and could gossip on for the duration without Sally having to say a word. The important thing, to Caroline, was that the girl feel she had someone she could come to if she needed to talk. Someone she could trust.

It was Sunday, and Caroline should have continued to clean her little building so that she could have dinner on the table by six-thirty—which was also her custom, even now, when there were only her cat and herself to appreciate the punctuality. Still, something made her stop at her honey's door and knock quietly. She had been to see the girl only two days previous, but she was having one of her "feelings". A feeling that Sally needed her company.

Her knock was quiet--people still slept late in her building on Sunday mornings--but Sally answered quickly, a slightly furtive glance into the hallway assuring her that it was only Caroline.

"Hello," she said timidly.

"Hi, Honey," Caroline replied pleasantly. "I was just cleaning, and I thought I'd stop by and say hi."

Without another word, Sally opened the door a little wider to accommodate the slightly plump older woman.

Caroline looked around the apartment, amazed once again to find that the place was, as always, perfectly kept. Sally never seemed to let a speck of dust grace her living space, and every sitting surface looked to have been recently vacuumed.

"How are you, Honey?" Caroline asked, smiling brightly and, as always, expecting no answer. Today, however, Sally surprised her, with a whispered "I'm okay, thanks. How are you?"

If anything, the old woman's smile grew wider, kinder. "I'm just great. You know those awful boys in 103? The ones who've been causing me so much trouble?" She grinned slyly as Sally nodded, moving to sit before her computer--her accustomed place during their "visits".

"They finally moved out. Oh," Caroline continued breezily, "I'll have to fumigate the place I'm sure--use a sand-blaster on the walls--but at least I don't have to deal with their loud parties anymore."

She walked quietly over to the desk to stand behind her honey, whose computer glowed soothingly in the dim apartment. "What are you working on today, Honey? Another psychological thriller?"

She had hoped that Sally's relative verbosity as she'd entered would signal that the girl was finally ready to talk, and she was pleasantly rewarded when Sally looked down at her hands, a little embarrassed, and stated, in a voice a good bit stronger than she had ever used previously, "They want to do a story on phobias..." Her smile, tiny and self-deprecating, was, nonetheless, the first of its kind that Caroline had ever seen from the timid mouse, and it gave the old woman heart.

"I guess I'd be the best one to research it, huh?" Sally asked, self-criticism coloring her tone.

"Honey," Caroline reassured her carefully, not sure how long this expansive mood was likely to last, but determined to take advantage of it while she could. "There are ways to overcome these things, you know?"

Sally nodded, then smiled sharply, self-cruelty seeming to take over again--the only emotion, barring fear--that she had yet to show. "But they all require leaving the apartment--which is what I'm afraid of to begin with. If I could go out to get help, I wouldn't need it." The little giggle she let out hinted at a beautiful alto chuckle hidden somewhere in her frightened frame, but there was too much fear, too much self-hate, in her to let that chuckle out.

Caroline looked at her appraisingly for a moment. She had to help the girl--she wasn't going to help _herself,_  that was clear. Sitting before her, Caroline took Sally's hands, which jerked in fear in response, then sat limply in the comforting, wrinkled old hands that held them. "What if I could find someone to help you  _here,_  huh? Would you do that? You wouldn't even have to leave the apartment, if you didn't want to."

Terror sprang into the girl's blue eyes, turning them to a frightened slate-grey. She shook her head, all her previous garrulousness lost in her nightmare vision of someone coming into  _her_  house,  _her_ cave,  _her_  safe little place...

"Honey," Caroline persisted, trying to soothe Sally's horror. "You're a pretty young girl." Her hands tightened their grip as the mouse before her ducked her head and shook it negatively. "You  _are._  You deserve to be happy... not afraid."

But Sally obviously wasn't having any of it. She just sat for a moment, staring past their entwined hands, until Caroline sighed and rose, giving her a last squeeze before disengaging. "I'm sorry, Honey," she said quietly, as Sally rose with her, eyes still on the ground. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push."

Sally walked silently with her to the door, holding it, barely open, as Caroline turned again and impulsively hugged her, the younger woman going stiff in shock at the movement. She was still shaking as Caroline turned back to the door, opening it wider to pass her bulk through the opening. "Shall I come by and see you tomorrow, Sally?"

The nod of Sally's head was barely perceptible, but Caroline simply smiled and said "Good. Tomorrow, then." She would have come regardless, but at least she had gotten some kind of response from the girl this time.

She thought that was a good sign.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

* * *

_August 21, 1996_

Caroline had taken to visiting her Honey every day now.

In truth, she had little else to do. Her pension and the money she made from the apartment building let her enjoy a retirement that was so often denied women her age, and she had only a few of those pet projects that were the mainstay of any "respectable" retired widow's existence.

She realised, as she climbed the three flights to Sally's room—feeling very much her age today--that Sally had become her biggest pet project. And today, she had a surprise for her.

"Good morning, Honey." Caroline delivered the one-sided greeting, surprised to receive an almost hale "Hi, Caroline" in return.

Sally sprang these bits of talkativeness on the older woman occasionally, and every time she heard one, Caroline began to have more hope for the young girl who was so withdrawn. She had been chipping away at the hard shell of fear around her honey, and greetings like that--small as they were--helped her to feel that maybe all her care and effort would not be for nothing.

Turning away from her thoughts, Caroline realized that there was a look on Sally's face that she had never seen before--almost happy. "You look cheery today," she remarked carefully.

"My, um-- my uncle wrote to me," Sally said quietly.

"People still write letters?" Caroline replied, mock-astounded.

"Email," Sally said, ducking her head self-consciously.

"Where does he live?"

"Back East."

"Is that where you used to live?" Caroline was sometimes able to get Sally to reveal things by simply asking at the right times. Now seemed to be one.

"Pittsburgh," Sally replied, in a frightened tone that said she would speak no more to that subject.

Caroline accepted the terse answer easily, and moved on. "And what did he have to say?"

Sally shrugged. "Nothing. It was just... good to hear from him."

There was a long moment of silence, and Caroline wondered again just why this pretty little thing was so withdrawn. Well... she hoped to find that out soon.

"I got a call yesterday, myself," she began breezily, watching the girl before her carefully. "An old friend of a friend--you know how it is... Anyway," she continued. "He's coming to visit me tomorrow. His name's Darrell Kauthen."

Sally simply nodded.

"Maybe I'll bring him up to meet you?"

The response was precisely what Caroline had expected.

"No, really," Sally said, her head shaking, more from fear than from her denial of the offer. "No, really, I have so much work to do. They have to start this script next week and I have so little done..." Her eyes dropped to her hands. "I really couldn't."

Caroline smiled inwardly. It seemed all you had to do to get Sally to talk was threaten to introduce her to someone.

"Well," Caroline said easily. "If you're too busy, of course, we won't disturb you." She smiled kindly at Sally's obvious relief. "But if you change your mind..."

That was enough, Caroline saw. The girl wasn't  _quite_  shaking like a leaf, but she was close. Enough surprises for one day. She stood, watching Sally pull herself gracelessly to her feet before her. She gave the girl's shoulder a little squeeze, felt muscles tighten in response, and headed toward the door.

"I may not be able to come up tomorrow," Caroline said as she walked out the door. "Visitors and all, you know how it is." She smiled a bright, reassuring smile as she turned back to her. "I hope you get all your research done, Honey."

* * *

_August 22, 1996_

She'd spent three hours talking to Dr. Kauthen. She had never met him before. He'd been referred to her by a couple of the psychologists she'd called. An expert in phobias, they said. He had been interested and attentive when she called, talking with her briefly "to try to get an idea of the seriousness of the case." Apparently, he regularly took pro bono cases--his interest in phobias in general driving him to seek the most severe cases out, simply for the chance to try to solve them.

Caroline knew she was over-stepping the bounds of friendship by bringing him to see Sally, but she put that thought out of her mind. It was her duty to help, wasn't it? And if Dr. Kauthen was willing--indeed  _eager_ \--to take the case...

She looked up at him, still vaguely taken with his looks. The psychiatrist was an impossibly tall, waspish-looking fellow, with deep, penetrating brown eyes, curly black hair, and massive hands. Good-looking in a severe way, he reminded her of the old psychiatrists who preached gloom and doom for the stars of bad b-movies--or a particularly odd undertaker, who spent more time  _making_ corpses than burying them.

Nevertheless, he seemed very gentle for all his size and his pallbearer's looks, and Caroline felt that she had finally found the man who might help her poor little Honey get out of the cave she'd built for herself.

Dr. Kauthen had listened patiently as she told him all about the timid child who rented the third floor room. He nodded understandingly when Caroline professed her worry for the girl.

"She doesn't have  _anybody,_ " Caroline observed sadly. "She told me about an uncle she has back East, but I get the feeling that she doesn't hear from him very often... And she just seems so afraid of reaching out, that I'm sure I'm the only person she knows here in Rattleby."

Kauthen jotted down a few notes in his notebook, nodding to himself as he did. "So you think she's completely alone?" he asked, as if the question was of some importance. "She doesn't know _anyone_?"

"Well how  _could_  she?" Caroline asked. "She never leaves that little apartment of hers. It's only the threat of starving to death that gets her to go out and buy groceries..." The old woman trailed off, discouraged.

"It's a bad case," the doctor agreed, finally standing, straightening his jacket. "But I've seen worse. Shall we go see her?"

Caroline rose as well, a wry grin on her face. "She'll be angry," she warned. "And she won't be talkative."

The doctor shrugged. "The shock will do her good, Mrs. Thurber," he assured her in quiet, rumbling tones. "She needs to be reminded that there is a world beyond her little apartment."

* * *

Caroline knocked warily, and, again, Sally was quick to answer the door. She froze when she saw the giant of a man standing behind her friend, a stark look of fear spreading across her face as she craned her neck to look up at his impossible height. She dropped her eyes instantly, as if he were Zvengali, and she was about to become his helpless slave, simply through the power of his deep brown eyes.

"Hello, Honey," Caroline said breezily, as if she had not just brought a living devil into her timid little pet's life. "This is that friend of mine I was telling you about." She stepped out from between the two opponents and introduced them. "Darrell Kauthen, this is Sarah Anderson. Sally, this is Darrell."

"Hello, Sally," the giant said, his voice surprisingly quiet, as he stuck his hand out for the customary handshake.

Sally's hand darted out quickly, was engulfed by a mitt twice its size, and darted back just as quickly, as her head bowed and her shoulders shook.

Habit alone led Sally to gesture for them to enter. She looked ready to bolt from the apartment, to take whatever dangers the wide world outside afforded her, if only to get away from the giant in her midst, but a friendly--firm--hand on her shoulder stopped her. The look she gave Caroline was enough to make the older woman drop her hand and hang her head.

"Caroline tells me you're a researcher for a television show?" Kauthen was saying, seemingly oblivious to the exchange, though he was acutely aware of Sally's reaction to his presence. She seemed absolutely petrified. "That must be exciting."

Sally's shoulders shrugged, her eyes casting back to the floor, where they seemed to be most comfortable.

"I had a friend who worked for Fox Broadcasting for a while," Kauthen continued, watching the girl squirm. "He did consulting for a medical show."

"Was he a shrink, too?" Sally asked suddenly, her voice rough, scared and angry at the same time.

Kauthen smiled, conceding the point. At least the shock had loosened her tongue. "Yes, he was," he replied, looking her over critically, though only kindness showed in his eyes. "Caroline asked me to come here because she thought I could help you."

"I don't need any help," Sally replied petulantly, shooting Caroline a look that made the old woman feel even worse.

"Have you always been so... introverted?" Kauthen asked casually.

She stared at him for a moment, the thick plastic of her glasses hiding her thoughts. She looked as if she wasn't going to answer. After a few moments, however, she shrugged, as if she assumed they'd talk it out of her anyway--as if she might as well give up. "No."

Kauthen remained seated, acutely aware of the effect his height had had on the girl. But he reached out his hands, taking hers in them, holding her fast as she tried to jerk back. "Sally, we only want to help you."

She ripped her hands away with a strength he wouldn't have expected of her, and her voice rose above a whisper for the first time since Caroline had met her--now it was a terrified shriek. "I don't want your help!" she screamed angrily, suddenly on the verge of tears. "I'm fine!" She stood still, instantly aware of what she had done, and apparently horrified by it. "Why can't you just leave me alone?" she begged almost silently, letting the tears course down her cheeks.

"Because I want to see you happy, Honey," Caroline whispered, catching the girl up in a gentle hug, feeling tense, angry, terrified muscles collapse against her as Sally finally gave in. "I want you to be happy... And you're not, are you?"

Sally's head rocked back and forth against the old woman's chest. "No," she cried pitifully. "No..."

* * *

Dr. Kauthen and Caroline sat with Sally and talked for nearly two hours, as the young girl told them about her life, her anguished tears never stopping for more than a moment. It was more than Caroline had been able to pry from her in three weeks.

Sally was the older of two children. Her brother had been the black sheep of the family; she, the darling, fair-haired girl. She'd been a writer for a while--a good one, if the journals that published her work were any judge. She'd gotten her master's degree in medical diagnostics, started working as a freelancer for numerous small journals, making a living wage, but little more. But she had been happy, content--secure in a life that was self-made.

Until a year ago.

At least, she had traced her problems back to a year ago, though she had only begun changing in the last few months.

Last September, she'd been to New York City, visiting the offices of one of her many clients. She'd arrived in Manhattan on Sunday. She remembered returning home on Friday--with nothing but darkness and vague memories in between.

Strangely, at the time, something had caused her not to worry about her lost week. She remembered small snatches of time--a concert she'd gone to, dinner with a friend... And her mind told her that that was sufficient. She had simply returned to her offices in Pittsburgh, going on with her life as if nothing had happened.

Since the beginning of this year, however, she'd become increasingly withdrawn, moving her offices into her small apartment, gently snubbing friends' invitations to dinner and movies, going out in public as rarely as possible--until she had come to the point where simply living in a city with that many people had terrified her.

A naturally reflective person, she had sought to discover the reason for her growing agoraphobia. Her only clue was that barely-remembered trip to Manhattan. But the knowledge hadn't stopped her fears--in fact, once she had determined exactly  _when_  the whole mess had started, she only seemed to get worse.

Her family and friends couldn't understand the change in the once boisterous young woman. Her boyfriend of nearly a year had urged her to seek professional help, but Sally believed she could handle it on her own.

Her increasing terror had finally driven him out, as she came to the point where having to live everyday with another person was more horrifying than she would ever have imagined.

But the separation caused her to have to face an even greater fear. Without him, she was forced to fend for herself. He had been willing to do the shopping, pick up the mail, deliver the increasingly few articles she wrote for her clients...

Without him, she had had to do these things herself. Which was how she'd made her way to Rattleby.

She had passed through it once on her way from California to the East Coast--back when she had been able to see a road trip across the country as an adventure, instead of a nightmare. The town of 6500 had been small, quaint. She had always told herself that she'd like to retire there someday.

Someday had become a month ago, when, stressed beyond her endurance, she had lost control of her fear while driving to the grocery store in Pittsburgh, totaling her car and leaving herself bare to the thing she feared the most. "There were just so many  _people,_ " she wept quietly, her eyes avoiding the sympathetic gazes of her two visitors. "They were crowding around the car, trying to take me out, trying to  _get_  me!" Her eyes became a little wild, and Caroline laid a soothing hand on her lap.

Sally was silent for a time, controlling herself, her memories, her fear. Finally, she whispered, "So I came some place where they  _couldn't_  get me."

Dr. Kauthen nodded understandingly, a strange light in his eyes. "Sally..." He chose his words with care. "I  _do_  want to help you." He held out a hand gingerly. "Will you let me?"

It seemed hours before Sally's hand reached timidly out to grasp his. Her eyes did not come up to engage him as he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Kauthen stood, and this time Sally rose without a sign of the fear his height had engendered in her earlier. She walked her visitors to the door, holding it open carefully as they walked through.

The doctor turned, smiling gently down at her. "May I come by tomorrow, Sally?"

She simply nodded tragically, and let the door close.

* * *

_Washington D.C.  
August 23, 1996_

The man had been late getting in to work. He hung his jacket on the hook behind his door, and sat at the computer he kept stashed in a corner, where it wouldn't interrupt the understated luxury of the rest of his office.

He let it warm up, his pulse quickening slightly at the tell-tale beep that told him he had mail. A firm hold on his nervousness, he clicked on the mail icon.

An anonymous server; a short message, with no signature, no return address:

Target acquired

He sat back, knowing he'd be holding his breath until he recieved the next email from his anonymous acquaintance.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Washington, D.C.  
August 26, 1996_

Scully walked in at nine-thirty that morning, and Mulder noticed that she looked as if she hadn't got much sleep the night before.

"Rough weekend?" he asked, smirking.

She threw him an annoyed glance, tossing her light coat on a nearby chair. "I'm cat-sitting,  _again,_ " she sighed, grabbing her coffee cup and heading for the coffee machine. "I don't know why I  _ever_ agreed to do this again. He yowls all night... I don't even  _like_  cats."

With a smile for her obvious crankiness, Mulder turned back to the file that had so engrossed him since he had entered the office this morning.

Her mood finally improving, Scully came up behind her partner, sipping at her coffee and glancing over his shoulder at the photographs that lay scattered across his desk. There were six of them--all men. A few showed signs of violence--most of it obviously self-inflicted: Here a slit wrist, there a bullet through the brain. Two showed no signs of the causes of their deaths at all. All were lying on a lakeshore--she couldn't be sure that it was all the same shore, but she suspected as much.

She looked at them closely for a few moments, slightly chilled by what she saw. Each had a distinctly calm look on his face, as if he'd only fallen off to sleep on the cool muddy surface beneath him.

"What are you working on?" she asked finally.

Mulder sat back, turning his chair toward her as she stepped back to lean against the file cabinets along the wall. "Lake Nanekkonke, Michigan," he announced. "Six men found dead in seven days, all along the same half-mile stretch of the lakeshore. All suicides."

"So what's your interest in this?" she asked, suspicious.

He passed her a photograph and attached file, identifying the man in question. "Dr. Marcus Cohn," he said quietly. "He was a psychiatrist, and all of the dead men were clients of his."

Scully studied the man for a moment. He was thin, looked tall--though in the photograph, it was hard to tell. He had deep-set eyes, curly dark hair, and a pallbearer's features. She looked up from the file. "What was he treating them for?"

Mulder shrugged. "A variety of phobias. Three of the victims were nyctophobic--afraid of the dark. One was agoraphobic. The other two were photophobes."

Scully looked at him strangely. "Is he the only link?"

Mulder smiled at her incredulity. She knew him too well. "One of the victims, Lucas Firman, was a photophobe. He hadn't left his house in daylight in nearly three years, had gone so far as to tape tin foil over all of his windows in an attempt to keep out the light. According to a friend of Firman's, Dr. Cohn had a theory that explained the man's acute fear."

"And it was?" she led patiently.

"He was an alien abductee."

Scully just stared at him, vaguely irritated by the Cheshire cat that lurked in his eyes. If he wanted her to take the bait, he'd better wriggle the worm a bit more.

Mulder leaned forward in his chair as he saw that she wasn't biting. "Cohn used hypno-regression therapy on all of them, and was able to pinpoint the beginnings of each of their fears." He sat back suddenly, a grim smile on his face. "They had all experienced missing time--lasting as much as a week in one man's case."

"And they hadn't been aware of the missing time previously?" Scully asked incredulously. "Surely a man doesn't lose a whole week of his life and just let it go."

"According to John Barrow's wife, her husband had taken a business trip to New Mexico two years ago. When he came back, he'd been vague about what he had done during the three days he'd been gone. At the time, she had suspected that he'd been cheating on her again, and didn't press the issue, but, over the next six months, he slowly began exhibiting agoraphobic responses. They reached such severity that, before his death, he'd hardly left his house in a year and a half." Mulder's hands came up to rest behind his head. "The truth was... Barrow never  _knew_  what happened while he was supposedly in New Mexico."

"So Cohn immediately concluded that he was an abductee?" Scully almost snorted her contempt. Mulder simply nodded his head in concession.

"Well, apparently," he asserted quietly, "abductees or not, whatever Cohn did for them seemed to work. John Barrow was able to leave his house for the first time in eighteen months, Renny Jileson threw away his nightlight..."

"If life was so good," Scully said skeptically, "then why did they all kill themselves?"

The Cheshire cat came out to play again in Mulder's eyes. "That's what we're trying to find out."

"So what does Dr. Cohn say?"

"Well..." Mulder answered, with the look of a spider who'd just caught the fly. " _That's_  what's puzzling. Marcus Cohn disappeared the day before the first man was found. He took all of his notes, all of his equipment, and just vanished."

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
August 26, 1996_

"Sally," Dr. Kauthen said quietly, his low voice rumbling through the air to brush against her ears. Sally's eyes were closed, her breathing deep and regular.

"Sally, you are completely relaxed now, do you understand?"

"Yes," she replied, in a voice that was strong, assured. She was never scared or timid in their hypnosis sessions--her real self, the self she'd been before that week in New York, was in control of her here. She had nothing to fear.

"Okay," Kauthen said, taking a notebook in his massive hands, flipping through the sessions they had conducted in the past four days. "Yesterday, you didn't want to talk about what happened during your week in New York. Are you ready to talk about it now?"

Sally sat still for a moment, then shook her head.

"Did it scare you?" Kauthen asked. "What happened in Manhattan last year?"

"Yes," she replied quietly.

"Were you hurt?"

Sally took a number of minutes to answer, and her voice was cold as she did. "Yes."

"Who hurt you? Can you tell me who it was?"

"Them," she said simply.

Kauthen jotted down a few notes to himself, and resumed the patient questioning he'd been undertaking daily since he'd met the girl. They were making  _some_  progress--she was now willing to speak more than three or four words in the space of as many minutes--but he knew the root of her problem lay in what had happened during that lost week in New York.

And he had a very good idea of what had happened there. He only needed her confirmation on the point. Then, he could take steps to remedy the problem.

"Who are they, Sally?"

She shivered, and simply repeated, "Them."

"Sally," he repeated carefully, "who are  _they_?"

"You're not supposed to know," she said calmly.

"Why not?" he persisted. "Why can't I know?"

"Because if you know, you'll--" she cut off sharply then, a look--harder than he'd ever seen from her, more anger than fear--came over her face for a moment. She repeated quietly, "You're not supposed to know."

 

He'd spent an hour now, gently trying to get Sally to tell him who  _they_  were. She wouldn't budge. It was almost as if someone had programmed her with one response: "You're not supposed to know."

He wasn't going to get through that block today, he saw, so he moved on to the second part of their session. The part that was helping her slowly come out of her shell.

"Okay, Sally," he said, always in that quiet, soothing tone that was designed to keep her in her somnolent state. "Now I want you to go back to a time  _before_  Manhattan. A time when you were happy, when you could walk out of your house, into the sun. Do you remember?"

Her smile was timid at first, but it grew quickly, brightening her tired face. "Yes..."

* * *

_Lake Nanekkonke, Michigan  
August 27, 1996_

Scully looked out at the calm lake with something very like loathing. The trip had been a complete waste, from her point of view. Mulder was convinced that there was evidence of alien activity, just waiting to be found, but Scully hadn't seen the slightest hint that he was on to anything momentous.

What infuriated her most was that he seemed to agree with her completely on the point of  _why_ these six men killed themselves. Cohn had talked them into it, obviously. Any good hypnotist could probably do it. Just plant a few suggestions in the subject's mind, and pretty soon, you had someone who would gladly kill himself--kill himself with just the same sort of smile on his face that these men had had.

So he knew there was nothing  _too_  strange about how the men had died.  _Why_  they had been talked into suicide was a completely different subject. But what Mulder was trying to find, she saw, was a reason to believe Cohn's suggestion that these six men had been abducted. He assured her that a friend of his at NICAP could substantiate UFO activity in four of the six places where the suicide victims had lost time--and at exactly the same periods of time, and he was desperately trying to find a way to link that information to the clues they already had.

The trip to Lake Nanekkonke was nothing more than a chance for Mulder to chase his little grey men again, she thought with a sigh, and she was already well sick of it. She told him as much as he searched the lakeshore for some telltale sign that  _they_  had been here.

"Scully," he asked, completely ignoring her response to his fervent search. "What do you think of this?"

She walked over to him tiredly, looking down at the slightly burnt log that seemed to fascinate him.

"It's a tree, Mulder," she replied sharply.

"But how did it get burnt?" he asked patiently, taking her arm and guiding her attention to the burn itself. "That's not from a campfire."

Despite herself, Scully examined the scar in the old piece of wood. She looked at it for a full minute before she concluded, "It looks like an acid burn of some kind--at least  _some_  kind of chemical." She didn't sound terribly sure of herself, though. The pattern of the burn stirred something in her memory. She couldn't remember where, but she knew she had seen a similar burn  _somewhere._

"Pretty strange to find out by a lake, isn't it?" Mulder persisted.

Scully rose from her crouch, hands on hips. "Mulder, we're right next to a small town. The kids around here were probably shooting off rockets or something." Again, she sounded a little unsure of her claim.

Mulder didn't seem to notice her unsurety, but he also wasn't at all convinced by her assertions. Still, he had nothing to base his suspicions on--and his partner was getting  _very_  cranky. Best to cut his losses and go back to Washington with what information he  _had_  been able to amass. It wasn't much, but it was enough to start with.

He knew  _something_  would come up in the next few days to help him make sense of this. There was a lot more to it than met the eye. Of that, he was sure.

* * *

_Washington, D.C.  
August 27, 1996_

He sat in his office, long after his assistant had departed for the day. He needed to sift through the information he'd acquired from the team in Michigan one more time, looking for anything he might have missed the first three hundred times round.

With a sigh, the short, powerfully-built man walked to the outer office, pouring himself yet another cup of coffee. He should never have agreed to head up this investigation. His ulcer was burning overtime, and he all but lived at the office, waiting for the messages that dribbled in at odd times during the day and night.

The man returned to his computer just as the tell-tale beep of his email program signaled another message. He pressed the mail button, sipping at his coffee as he read:

Dear Uncle Rob,

I don't know if I like this. The doctor seems to know what he's doing, but I can't believe this is going to help me. He's trying to get me to remember what happened in New York, but it's hard.

I'm not sure how well this will work, but at least I have him on my side, and I guess that's as much as I can hope for.

I hope Aunt Jane is doing well. Say hi for me.

My love,

Sally

He took a deep breath, let it out on a count. These seemingly normal letters were carefully coded so that his operative could tell him what he needed to know without worry of the letters being intercepted.

According to this one, she was reeling the doctor in slowly, keeping him guessing until she was sure he would jump to the conclusion they wanted. It was a painstaking business--she had already taken longer to make contact than they thought she would.

Still, he thought, it wasn't going badly. She still seemed to feel she was in control of the situation--just like Hildar had. He shut off that line of thinking, concentrating on the current operation. Nanekkonke had been a dismal failure, but at least it had given him a place to start.

He couldn't help thinking that they would have been a lot more successful if he'd been allowed to tell his operatives the truth about what they were looking for. But the Powers That Be had decreed that that information was on a need-to-know basis only.

Personally, he thought Sally  _needed_  to know. What she didn't know was very likely to get her killed.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
August 28, 1996_

"I got off the plane at La Guardia," Sally was saying, in a slightly dreamy, slightly vague voice. Dr. Kauthen simply nodded, murmuring for her to continue.

"Corbett Niles, the editorial manager, met me at the concourse... We walked to the baggage claim, got my bags, and he took me to the hotel."

"And what was the hotel like?" Kauthen asked, glad to finally have a break in this case. If he could just keep her going, keep her talking about what had happened in Manhattan, maybe he could get to the real proof he was looking for. After that, the rest would be easy.

"It was small, pretty. It was near Central Park... The Pickwick Arms Hotel... The rooms were kind of small, but they were clean...."

"And what did you do after you got to the hotel?"

"Corbett said he was going to take me to an operetta at the Met. The New York City Opera was doing  _Regina_... So I changed for the opera and--" She broke off sharply.

"And how was the opera, Sally?" Kauthen leaned forward, ready to snatch up the information she was about to provide.

But once again, he was denied. "You're not supposed to know," Sally replied calmly.

"It's just an opera, Sally," Kauthen said quietly, persuasively. "Can't I at least know how the opera was?"

"You're not supposed to know," Sally said obstinately.

Kauthen shook his head a little angrily. This was the toughest memory block he'd come up against yet. He'd never seen them be so thorough. It might take weeks to get through. If he could just get a _hint_  that he was correct in his theories, he could proceed with the next step. After that, it wouldn't matter what happened in Manhattan.

"Okay," he agreed simply. "So what did you do after the opera?"

Sally was silent.

"Sally," he persisted. "What happened after you saw  _Regina_?"

Her face screwed up painfully, and her voice was little more than a whisper. " _They_  came."

Kauthen nodded in satisfaction.  _Them._  "Who are  _they_ , Sally?" he asked, though he already knew.

"They're--" The pain dropped away from her face, only to be replaced by anger. "I won't tell you."

The doctor straightened up. She'd never been so blunt before. That he wasn't supposed to know, she was more than willing to admit--but that she  _wouldn't_  tell him...? "Why won't you tell me, Sally?"

"I  _won't_  tell you!" She was becoming more agitated by the moment, and Kauthen placed a reassuring hand on her knee.

"It's okay, Sally," he assured her. "It's all right. You don't have to tell me now, if you don't want to..." He sat studying her for a moment, as she regained her composure.

He  _had_  to be right. He'd seen too many of these cases to be mistaken. And he was running out of time. Still... He couldn't do this until he was absolutely certain.

So, he took a deep breath, relaxed, and said quietly. "Okay, Sally... Now, I want you to go back to a time before Manhattan..."

* * *

_Washington D.C.  
September 1, 1996_

The office was still dark--his secretary, early worker though she was, wouldn't be in for another hour. It was just as it should be. It gave him time.

He worked slowly through the messages he'd been sent by his agent in Arizona--often twice a day. Half of them were, seemingly, letters of a tired, frightened young woman to her doting uncle. These were plainly routed, though they went through a less high-profile, less governmental, mailbox before coming to him here. The others were cryptic, often only two or three words. These terse messages were routed elaborately through a hundred different aliases, ensuring that only the most dedicated of hackers could have located both the sender and the addressee--and that, only after a longer time than their quarry was likely to have.

He hoped. They'd taken so long to get in place as it was, and every day gave the opponent more chances to slip through his fingers again.

The simple, plainly sent letters told him more than they were meant to convey to a casual observer. They had changed subtly over the last few days. Before, she'd been guardedly optimistic, but now, the letters told him that she was hot, and that made her head hurt.

Weather was always hot in Arizona, particularly in August, but it wasn't the desert heat, nor a simple headache, that she was talking about. She was close to getting enough proof to nail their opponent, but the situation was worrying her.

He had known the young woman nearly all her life--she had been only days old when he, a grunt in her father's marine unit, had returned to the States and had accompanied her father on his homecoming. He had been close to the family ever since, attending picnics and barbeques, cheering her on in her little league baseball games. He'd seen her graduate high school, college, medical school, the Academy...

He knew her. And he knew that, as quickly as she had volunteered for this assignment, she was scared by what she was up against. She wasn't a field agent, having spent her years since graduation in the labs. And this opponent was dangerous, deadly. Only by keeping her head would she keep her life.

But she seemed to be doing just that. The whole operation was going well--or as well as could be expected, given previous fiascos. And if it continued as it had been, she would be home in less than a month.

 _If_  it continued to go well...

* * *

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

_Washington, D.C.  
September 2, 1996_

Scully came into the office late, as she had every day for the past two weeks.

Her friend Salome Menschner had said she'd only be gone for ten days or so--visiting family in Georgia. But her grandmother had fallen ill again, and so Scully was left with the cat--a huge black and white tom, named, appropriately enough, Psycho. He liked her, but he was becoming increasingly certain that his owner would never come back to claim him, and he had the lungs to voice his disapproval of this prospect so well, that he often kept Scully up most of the night with his yowling and pleas for comfort.

Sunk in her own fatigue, it took Scully a full minute to notice that Mulder was staring at her. Just sitting back in his chair, staring, with the strangest look on his face.

"What?" she finally asked, disturbed by his gaze.

"Byron Chadwick? One of the suicide victims?"

"Yes?" she replied, leaning curiously against his desk.

Mulder tossed a file at her, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "His real name was Larry Hildar... He worked for the Bureau."

She shot him a look, then sat down to read through the dead man's service record. "This wasn't in the original file," she observed cautiously.

He nodded his agreement. "The local police would never have known. As it was, it took  _me_  nearly a week to get the information. Whoever buried him did a good job."

Scully met his eyes. "You think he was undercover?"

Mulder stood up, heading for the door. "I think it bears investigating."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Agent Mulder," Assistant Director Skinner informed him briskly. "I can't approve this investigation."

"But, sir," Mulder protested in his most reasonable voice. "This is one of our own."

Skinner just looked at him with candid eyes.

"Is there another investigation going on here?" Again, he received only silence. "Sir," he tried again, "if there's an investigation into these suicides--"

"Then it has nothing to do with you," Skinner broke in coolly.

"But, sir--"

"It is not my job to keep you informed of every investigation that the Bureau sees fit to pursue, Agent Mulder." Skinner turned himself pointedly back to his work. "You're excused."

Mulder walked out quietly, his curiosity burning. Whatever this investigation was, he had an idea that not even Skinner understood its importance. He didn't know why, he just had a feeling that this case was a lot more than it appeared.

And Mulder was determined to find out all about it.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
September 3, 1996_

She woke at ten till three--almost half an hour before her alarm clock, and in the eerie, deep-night silence, she pulled on her clothes, shutting off the alarm before it could ever have the chance to ring.

The craving had long-since outweighed the need for sleep, and so it was that she found herself alert long after the world had gone to bed, and long before even the best go-getter would think to rise. Walking quietly to her bedroom window, she raised the sash--well-oiled against a tell-tale squeak--and crawled out onto the iron staircase that ran beside the building.

The old fire escape seemed more at home on the streets of New York City, but it provided the tenants with their own little porches, and brought to mind the quaint feel of an old city in what, mere years ago, had been a tiny, backwater town.

She held her breath, looking at the upper windows, and listened for signs of wakefulness from those above. The apartment one floor up from her was quiet--as it should have been. The young man who lived there was a long-haul trucker, and she had witnessed him coming home from a very long trip not three hours ago. His windows were dark, their curtains drawn tightly, that the morning sun and the sound of a waking world might not rob him of a proper ten-hour rest.

As she climbed the stairs past his window, the woman held her breath once again. The girl who lived on the fifth floor was often a problem in these nightly sojourns. She was an artist--one of the many struggling youngsters just out of school who hoped that the rugged, painted West would spur them to create masterpieces that would ensure both fame and financial well-being.

Being a painter, she seemed to feel the need to live unusually, which often meant keeping unusual hours. As a consequence, her neighbor below was occasionally obliged to forgo her own satisfaction, owing to the dedicated young artist's need to paint stunning landscapes in the dead of night.

Tonight, however, it seemed the muse needed sleep as much as anyone else, and the painter's windows were also dark, with curtains drawn. Silently, the woman made her way past.

Gaining the roof, she stepped carefully away from the wrought-iron ladder, acutely aware of even the minimal noise her tennis-shoed feet made on the tar-backed gravel that coated her haven.

Stepping to one side, she sat gratefully against the low brick wall that skirted the roof, and drew her knees up to her chin, sighing in the cool night air with a relief akin to joy. With a quiet hand, she drew a thin silver box from the pocket of her sweatpants, studying it carefully, as she had so many times before.

Opening it, she dug out a small paper cylinder and a silver lighter that matched the little case. She lit the cigarette, inhaling deeply before she continued her ruminations on the box in question.

It had been a present from one of her father's friends--one of the many men she had spent her childhood calling "Uncle". She had no real uncles, of course, and she was well aware, from a very young age, that these men were simply dear friends of the family. As she grew, she realized how dear many of them truly were, as they openly supported her in a career about which she had received so much opposition.

Her father had hated the little cigarette case, she recalled, with a faint smile for his reaction. He had claimed--as he was often wont to do--that this was the  _first time_  he was actually almost glad his wife was eight years in her grave, that she would never see her daughter embracing  _that sort_  of habit. He'd had a lot of first times with that phrase, she thought, a low, throaty chuckle escaping her despite herself.

He'd be proud of her now. She hadn't knocked the habit completely--probably never would--but she was only  _able_  to smoke infrequently here. It wasn't in character--and she had tried very hard to build up this character of "Sally the Introvert". She wouldn't spoil it by letting her landlady smell smoke in her rooms.

She sighed deeply, a long drag on her cigarette calming her as that anxiety rose up again. At first, this had been fun, finally getting the chance to be an active agent instead of a tech-head. It was a chance for a "vacation" of sorts, and an opportunity to pretend that she was back in her college days, when, too young to be taken seriously by the other students in many respects, she was nevertheless able to distinguish herself in the theater. Let them say what they would about her too-prominent intelligence, or her lack of ability to fit in on campus. They could never say that she didn't light up a stage.

That brought a melancholy smile to her lips. There was such a thing as playing a role for too long. Such was the case with "Sally". She missed her friends, her lover... She missed bustling streets and high-society nightlife...

She missed herself.

With a tired hand, she combed through her long, dark hair. It was one of her vanities--one of the many things she'd had to suppress as she wove the character she played deeper into her life. It seemed unnatural for her to bind the gorgeous tresses up into such an unflattering rope. Unnatural for her, but all too natural for "Sally".

She'd been picked for this operation because of two outstanding items in her background. One had been the acting, the often eerie ability she had to let herself sink below the surface, allowing her alter ego to take over almost completely, but the other, more unusual gift, was by far more important. She was just afraid now that her immersion in this pitiably mousy girl that she'd been required to become would affect her "trick."

And she needed that trick if she was going to survive to see the target captured.

This was like no case she'd ever worked before--like no case she'd ever  _heard_  of before. It wasn't normal for agents to be undercover this deep, to set up sting operations this elaborate. She knew there was more going on here than her superiors were telling her.

She just hoped that lack of knowledge didn't get her killed.

With a sigh, she stubbed out her first cigarette, reaching into her silver case for a second. She looked at the little paper cylinder for a moment, sighed again, and put it back. "Sally" was even forcing her to stop smoking.

If she forced her to stop  _resisting,_  she'd be dead long before they got the evidence to nail the killer.

* * *

_Washington, D.C._

Mulder sat in his office until well past midnight, trying to piece the case together. Skinner may have denied his request to investigate, but he couldn't deny Mulder's curiosity.

Sitting before his computer, Mulder pored over the personal files of the dead agent and Dr. Marcus Cohn, looking for patterns.

Larry Hildar had  _officially_  taken an extended leave from the Bureau, pleading the ailing health of his mother. His mother, Mulder found as he dug deeper, had died some six years previous.

Nine months ago, Hildar had dropped off the face of the earth. And in his place, Byron Chadwick had appeared, moving to Nanekkonke just six weeks before he met the mysterious Marcus Cohn.

It was probably very easy for Hildar to get close to Cohn, Mulder mused silently, his eyes staring sightlessly at the clock, which tried desperately to convey to him the fact that it was nearing four a.m. Hildar had probably just gone to Cohn to ask for help, and Cohn, who had apparently been looking for people with just "Chadwick's" supposed phobic condition, was only too glad to provide it.

But why? Mulder thought angrily. It just didn't make sense. Why was Cohn seeking these people out? What did they know, what had they found out, that he felt the need to kill them? And Hildar? What about him? Why had he been asked to get close to the doctor--for that was obviously what had happened.

And where did the UFO sightings and claims of abduction come in? ...Could  _that_  be the link he'd been searching for? Could they have seen something that wasn't meant to be seen? How had Cohn found out about them, then? And why was the government trying to keep tabs on him?

Mulder sat back, finally exhausted by the questions running around in his head. With one last effort, he turned back to the computer, taking a final look at Hildar's service record. His last superior, before the "extended leave", had been Robert Goldman, a lower-level bureaucrat in the Washington office.

Maybe  _he'd_  know what Hildar had been up to...

* * *

_Washington, D.C.  
September 4, 1996_

The man nodded his greeting to his assistant, the young woman smiling in response. Without a clue to his deeply agitated state, he walked into his office and closed the door quietly behind him.

He had more email. With a worried hand, he smoothed down the hair at the base of his skull and, with the other, pressed the mouse button.

Dear Uncle Rob,

I think this doctor is finally starting to help. He's still working on trying to break up that block I have, and I think he's making a lot of progress. I can go out occasionally now, though I'm still a little scared. I'm encouraged, though.

It's even hotter now, as September starts up. I thought, once fall started, that maybe the weather would cool down, but it's hotter than ever.

Give my love to everyone back home. I'll try to write you soon, though this project I'm working on is taking a lot of my time.

Much love,

Sally

The second message--anonymous as always--was chilling:

Breach possible. Advise as to contingency plan.

Robert Goldman shook his head. The operation was falling apart-- _again. "I think he's making a lot of progress..."_  Somehow, her ability to resist any kind of hypnotic influence--the very reason she'd been approached about taking on this operation--was being broken down by the repeated therapy sessions.

 _"It's even hotter now..."_  She was scared--more scared than she'd ever been--that she wasn't going to be able to get through this.

Damn! He'd already lost one agent to this mystery. He couldn't lose another--especially not  _her._  He sat back a moment, thinking. There had to be some way he could get her out without tipping Kauthen off. If he knew they were after him, he'd go to ground and they'd never find him.

And all of Goldman's well-laid plans--all the secrets he kept from his agents about the  _real_  reason for this operation--would come to nothing. The information that Kauthen had would be lost, and others like him would likely become unreachable as well.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ_

"So how are you feeling today, Sally?" Dr. Kauthen asked in that quiet, rumbling voice of his. He sat on the armchair that had virtually become his in the last two weeks, sipping the tea that Sally had offered him as he entered.

"Okay," she allowed in a whisper. Sally sat on the couch. She'd finally broken herself of the habit of hiding behind her computer screen--a trick she'd used in those first days of the therapy. "I... went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon."

Kauthen gave her an encouraging grin, as if her going to the grocery store in broad daylight was akin to a toddler taking his first steps. "That's good," he reassured her, as her head dropped in embarrassment. "It's progress."

"I suppose so," she agreed.

They sat in silence, as was their custom at the beginning of each session. Kauthen had said he felt it important that Sally get used to the idea of other people being around her, though not necessarily centered on her. It would give her the feeling that all eyes were, indeed,  _not_  on her--that she could live life outside of her self-imposed fishbowl.

He watched her carefully as she finished her tea, though he tried to be inconspicuous about it. She was getting better, and part of him was glad for that. But another part of him knew that the closer she got to being normal again, the closer she was to uncovering the secrets. She hadn't told him much before now, though he knew enough of the pieces to put it all together.

And there was a voice, deep in the back of his mind, that told him to hurry up. Something wasn't right here. Not Sally, maybe--she seemed... genuine. But something...

Within this frightened, pretty young woman were secrets that no one could ever find out. If the common man were to find out the things she knew, he and others like him would be as good as dead--or worse  _than_  it. And he knew, as all of his kind did, that this simply could not be allowed to happen. They'd spent years getting themselves in place, and they couldn't simply throw it all away because of what other factions of the group insisted on doing to these people.

He was sorry for her pain, sorry for the losses she had endured--but ultimately, it all came down to self-preservation. And  _that_  was something that Darrell Kauthen had proven to be very good at.

Sally knew he was watching her, and kept up her act with skill. She would have to start feeding him more information soon, or she'd face the possibility that he'd simply decide she wasn't a suitable target. She smiled inwardly, thinking of how funny her friends back in Washington would find this scenario. She had always scoffed at talk of aliens and alien abductions....

Now she would have to draw on everything she'd ever heard her friends say about the subject--just to catch one strange, frightening killer. She was still worried about the slips she'd made in earlier sessions, but she hoped that now, as she was forced to think her way through the web of lies she had to spread for the psychiatrist, she would be able to hold it together.

"Okay," Kauthen said finally, setting aside his teacup and leaning forward in his chair. "Today, I want to do something a little different, all right?" He smiled again as Sally nodded warily. "We're going to try a different form of hypnosis..."

* * *

_Washington, D.C._

"Sir," his assistant said quietly, sticking her head in the door. "An Agent Mulder is here to see you."

"Send him in," Goldman replied after a moment.  _Damn!_  Mulder was all he needed today. If that loose cannon had somehow gotten wind of the operation...

"Agent Mulder," he said calmly, rising to greet the young man. "I'm surprised to see  _you_  here. What can I do for you?"

Mulder took a seat, eyeing the bureaucrat warily. "I was hoping you could help me locate an agent that worked for you, sir," the agent said evenly.

Goldman shrugged. "I'll do whatever I can, of course." He held his mental breath as he sat down himself. "Who are you looking for?"

"Agent Hildar, sir," Mulder replied easily, though he was keeping a sharp eye out for anything that Goldman's body language might tell him.

He was out of luck. Robert Goldman had been playing the game--both sides of it--for nearly as long as Mulder had been alive. He knew it too well to show his cards this early in the round.

"I thought he was staying with his mother," Goldman said quietly, injecting a plausible bit of quiet grief into his tone. "Cancer makes it so hard on the family," he mused darkly. "You never know what's going to happen from day to day."

Mulder nodded impatiently at the other man's act--seeing it for it was. "His mother died six years ago, Mr. Goldman," Mulder informed him coldly. "I think you know where Hildar was-- _and_  why he was killed."

Goldman stared at the younger man until Mulder started to squirm under his gaze. "You're dangerously close to stepping on entirely the wrong toes, Agent Mulder," he informed him stonily, giving up the act. "Be careful you don't get squashed in the process."

"I just want to know what's going on, Mr. Goldman," Mulder replied evenly. "Six people--five of them innocent civilians, one of them one of our  _own!_ \--were made to commit suicide.  _I_  can't find a reason. But the man who was probably behind it is gone--and I think  _you_  know where he is."

Goldman appraised him quietly for a few minutes. "You're mistaken, Agent Mulder," he said finally. "You are well aware that the Bureau does not launch the kind of clandestine sting operations that you seem to be implying." He leaned forward, picking up his pen and turning back to his paperwork, obviously dismissing the younger man. "If you're looking for conspiracies, Agent Mulder, go try the CIA. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do."

Mulder nodded grimly as he stood. "So how many more agents do you have involved in this project, Mr. Goldman?" he asked quietly. "How many more of them are going to die before you do something about it?"

Goldman kept his silence as the young agent stepped out of his office and closed the door behind him. Only then did the older man let out his breath, more a groan than a sigh.

How many more, indeed?

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

_September 8, 1996_

Sally Anderson sat quietly, a cup of tea in her hand, looking out the window at the few cars that graced the street below. Dr. Kauthen had just left, and she still felt the peace that this new hypnosis therapy always brought her.

She'd been worried by the feeling, after those first few sessions, afraid that somehow, she would let something slip to the calm quiet of his voice. It had a different rhythm to it, something she'd never heard in their previous hypnosis, and she was afraid she was succumbing.

So now, after every session, she went quietly to the bookshelves that covered one entire wall of her living room, and took down the hidden tape machine she'd been using to record the daily therapy.

She put down her tea carefully, pressing play on the tape machine.

"Sally?" Kauthen's voice was, as always, calm and soothing. "Do you remember what happened when they took you?"

Sally visualized the scene in her mind: Seeing Kauthen sitting in that over-stuffed chair, her sitting comfortably on the couch before him. At the question, she'd nodded. "There was a light..."

"What kind of light?"

She remembered trying to think about all her friends had told her about abduction experiences, repeating it in a flawless, slightly scared tone--just what Kauthen would be expecting. "They were... red... and blue. They were so bright..."

"And then what happened?"

"I was... somewhere else. A--a ship..."

The questioning continued, Sally providing the day's information, planting it all carefully, hoping that this time, he'd begin to try to bend her toward the violence she'd been told about when she was prepped for this assignment.

Kauthen had somehow  _talked_  his victims into suicide, after determining that they'd come to believe that they were abductees. The Bureau had no reasons--at least none that they were wiling to give her--as to Kauthen's motives. They only knew that he'd been responsible for sixteen suicides in the last two years.

If she was lucky, she'd be his next "victim".

Finally, the questioning concluded, and his voice modulated strangely into that cadence that was so alluring.

"Sally... Now I want you to remember what things were like  _before_  Manhattan...."

The tape continued on, but Sally, her eyes now closed, her head laying peacefully against the back of her chair, heard a different scenario running through her mind, as the hypnotic suggestions that Kauthen had laid for her were activated by his quiet words. Sitting back in the heat of her apartment, Sally remembered....

All the things that had happened  _before_  Manhattan...

* * *

 _Washington, D.C._  
September 9. 1996  
8:45 AM, EST

Robert Goldman read the letter over again, beginning to sweat.

Dear Uncle Rob,

Things aren't going so well here. Dr. Kauthen seems to be stuck now, and things aren't progressing at all the way he wanted them to.

I'm trying to remember, really I am. But all the attempts in the world seem to be coming to nothing.

I hope he makes some kind of breakthrough soon. After all the progress I've made in the last couple of weeks, I can't imagine staying like this forever...

Love,

Sally

What the  _hell_  was going on? She'd been so close to getting him to start the procedures. So close to getting him to incriminate himself by trying to talk her into killing herself.

Now... nothing. It had all dried up. Goldman took a sip of his coffee, grimacing slightly at its bitter taste.

He had to pull her out. They'd failed again, though this time, he had no idea  _why._  Nanekkonke had been obvious--Hildar had simply been weaker than they'd expected... Maybe Sally was too strong? Maybe the plan for her to hold back on the information had been a bad one--Kauthen had decided that she wasn't worth the trouble. Maybe he thought she had had the information buried deeply enough that it would never come to the surface.

From previous incidents, they knew that these men tried not to hurt their victims unnecessarily--some sort of twisted attempt at mercy for the condemned, Goldman supposed. The people who had killed themselves seemed not to feel the pain of their actions at all. And they had all shown honest, marked improvement before the psychiatrists had gotten the information they needed, and eliminated the witnesses.

He shook his head angrily. He'd pull her out today and try to get his superiors to send in a discreet retrieval team to apprehend Kauthen if they could. If they were lucky, he'd have no time to try to pass the files on to his colleagues and they'd be able to at least retrieve  _something._

With another gulp of bitter coffee, Goldman prepared a terse letter to his operative, setting it up to route through the hundred little blind alleys they'd set up to ensure privacy.

The message was simple, the directions something she'd clearly understand:

Pullout required. Rendezvous 3A.

 _I can't imagine staying like this forever..._  Don't worry, he promised her silently. You won't have to.

The message sent, he walked to his desk, picking up the phone and dialing the private number of his superior--his  _real_  superior, not the FBI director, whose office staff stamped his checks.

"Yes?" The voice was old, made coarse by too many years of too many cigarettes.

"Sir," Goldman replied quietly. "We have a problem with the operation..."

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
9:15 AM MST_

Sally sat, eyes closed, breathing relaxed, as Dr. Kauthen finished his programming. He'd realized, over the past few days, that perhaps he'd been wrong about her. Perhaps Sally wasn't exactly what she seemed. He determined today to find out just who she really was.

Kauthen knew himself to be a very sharp man--sharper than some of his colleagues. He'd heard about Cohn up in Michigan, and had had no sympathy for the idiot. He was too obvious by half--forever hunting up experiencers who had families, wives, children, husbands...

It had only been a matter of time before he was caught. Kauthen would  _never_  let that happen to him. There was too much at stake.

Which was why he'd honed his suspiciousness to a very fine point--fine enough to tell him that Sally Anderson was not all she professed to be. Putting his suspicion to work, he leaned in, his voice always in those soothing, seductive cadences that were so irresistible to them all...

"Sally," he asked quietly. "What will you do when I leave today?"

Her voice was completely calm. "Listen to the tapes."

Kauthen leaned forward slightly. "What tapes?"

"The tapes of the session."

"You make tapes of our sessions?" he asked, tension rising. "Why?"

"So that my superiors can tell if the sessions are going well."

Kauthen started sweating. "Who are your superiors, Sally?"

His nervousness increased as Sally, completely under the control of this new hypnosis that the doctor knew so well, told him everything he wanted to know....

* * *

_Washington, D.C.  
11:15 AM EST_

The old man pulled the lit cigarette from his mouth only long enough to coldly reassure the man before him. "You've done what you could, Goldman," he said quietly. "My men will take care of the problem from here."

Goldman nodded. "What about my operative?"

"We'll bring her back, of course," the old man replied, the implacable look in his eyes clearly dismissing his underling.

Robert Goldman nodded, a sick look on his face as he turned away. Sally wouldn't see the end of another day, if that cigarette-smoking bastard had anything to say about it.

As he closed the door to the old man's office, Goldman set out to make sure he didn't. If he was lucky, she was already on her way to Phoenix to catch a flight to Utah, as their pullout plan had specified. She was supposed to meet one of their operatives at the Salt Lake airport, and from there, he could arrange to get her somewhere safe until he could bring the power of some of the many government bureaucrats who had adopted the young woman to bear against the cigarette-smoking man and his plans for elimination.

Robert Goldman had never before questioned what his country was asking him to do for it. It was his job--protect the homeland and all that. And  _they_  had always seemed an enemy  _worth_  protecting against...

But he was beginning to see that the worst enemy to the United States might not be these frightening men who could kill with a word.

That enemy could well be the men who ran her.

* * *

_Salt Lake City, UT  
12:45 PM MST_

The agent watched carefully as passengers disembarked from United Airlines flight #264 out of Phoenix, looking for one particular woman.

When she didn't appear, he pulled out a cellular phone, dialing an unlisted Washington, D.C. number. "Sir," he replied to the quiet greeting he'd received. "She's not here."

The young agent listened detachedly as his superior cursed. Finally, the man in Washington took a deep breath and said, "Keep an eye on all flights, Wilson. If we're very lucky, she's only running late."

"And if we're not?" Wilson asked, a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"It's not going to matter anyway," Goldman replied, his heart sinking at the possibilities.

* * *

_Washington, D.C.  
3:15 PM EST_

Mulder sat back from his computer console, rubbing his eyes under his glasses as he reached for his coffee. Scully looked over at him quietly.

He'd been working on this Nanekkonke case non-stop for weeks now, and he was still no closer to an answer. She felt that he was wasting his time, but felt equally sure that she'd be wasting  _her_  time if she tried to tell him so. He'd hold on to it like a dog with a bone until something shook loose that he could use.

Sunk in their own thoughts, they both jumped as Mulder's phone rang.

"Mulder."

"Agent Mulder," came a worried, deep voice. "This is Robert Goldman. I need to see you immediately. The Jefferson Memorial."

He hung up, leaving Mulder staring at his phone in puzzlement.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
1:18 PM MST_

Sally Anderson sat down at her computer, finally getting a chance to check her mail for any more instructions from her "Uncle Rob." She was unsurprised by what she found.

Pullout required. Rendezvous 3A.

She sighed. Oh, well, she'd known it was coming. Kauthen was giving her nothing, and her superiors were bound to conclude that this was a lost-cause operation.

It took her a scant hour to pack the few personal items she'd brought with her. The rest would be left, claimed later--when the coast was clear--by other agents, posing as brothers or friends.

She thought sadly of what this sudden exit would do to the sweet old lady who ran the building. It was stupid to feel that kind of remorse when she knew that her life quite probably depended on her leaving-- _now_ \--but she couldn't shake the idea of what losing her "Honey" might mean to Caroline Thurber.

Sally was shaken out of her reveries by the ringing of her phone. It never rang. Never. Not in the entire month and a half that she had lived here had that phone done more than sit uselessly on the table.

Which meant only one thing. Something had gone wrong in Washington. Robert was calling to tell her to hurry up about it, or to change her plans completely. It had to be urgent if he was calling.

She worried over that as she made her way across the room, dropping her two, heavy suitcases in front of the door as she headed for the phone. "Hello?"

She was surprised, and suddenly a bit nervous, to hear Darrell Kauthen's voice on the line. "Hello, Sally."

"Hi, Dr. Kauthen," she replied, slipping easily back into her shy, introverted character. "How are you?"

There was an edge to his voice that started her worrying again. "I'm fine," he replied. She almost didn't notice as his voice fell into those soothing cadences so familiar to their hypnosis sessions. "Salome," he told her quietly, as she jumped at his use of her real name. "I know what you're doing. Before Manhattan, you would never have kept those tapes."

Sally's eyes glassed over, her grip on the phone slipping slightly.

"Before Manhattan, you would have gotten rid of  _all_  the evidence, Sal," he continued soothingly, activating the switches he had been patiently setting for the last week. Before this morning, he'd never thought to have to use them like  _this._  "You would never have let them know."

Salome Menschner nodded dully in her empty apartment. "I'd destroy all the evidence," she agreed numbly.

* * *

_Jefferson Memorial  
3:30 EST_

Robert Goldman stood in the shadows, his hands wrapping themselves around each other in guilt. "Agent Mulder," he called quickly, spying the young agent as he mounted the steps.

"What do you want, Mr. Goldman?" Mulder asked coldly. The man had refused to give him any information before, and Mulder was not naive enough to think that he would suddenly open up to him now.

He was surprised. "I need your help, Agent Mulder," Goldman said quietly. "I have an operative in... an awkward position."

"How awkward?"

"Her life depends on you getting to her before someone else does."

Mulder digested that silently. Then, in a wary voice: "Who is she?"

Goldman ignored the question. "She's in a small town in Arizona--called Rattleby." Goldman's eyes were suddenly pleading. "Please, Agent Mulder. I can't get any of my own agents to her."

"Why not?"

"I can't tell you that!" the older man stated angrily. "She's involved in a project so dangerous... You could never imagine."

"Does it have to do with the deaths in Michigan?" Mulder was determined to get  _some_  information from this man before he strode blindly into the situation.

"Yes, yes, it has to do with Nanekkonke," the older man replied testily. Goldman fell silent a moment, finally realizing that Mulder would do nothing for him without obtaining a little information. He thought fast, feeding the agent his "official" explanation of the operation, hoping it would be enough to convince him.

"She's part of a sting operation in Rattleby, Arizona. Cohn moved there after he left Nanekkonke, and has begun to commit the same kinds of crimes that he perpetrated in Michigan." Goldman shook his head. "Please, Agent Mulder. You already know what happened to Agent Hildar. Would you let another agent die?"

Mulder stood still for a moment. Damnit! Something else was going on here, and he  _needed_  to find out what it was. But Goldman was right. He couldn't let another agent die. And if he got to her in time, he was sure  _she_  could give him the information he was looking for.

"Where is she?"

Goldman smiled his relief, handed Mulder a file, and disappeared.

Mulder opened the folder, staring at the agent's photo in quiet horror, and had his cellphone in hand in seconds. "Scully, it's me." He took a deep, shuddering breath, heading for his car at a run. "I need you to get two tickets on the earliest flight to Phoenix and meet me at National as soon as you can."

"What's this about, Mulder?" Scully asked suspiciously.

Mulder reached his car, starting the engine even as he sighed. "It's about Sal," he said sadly. "She's in trouble."

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
5:30 PM MST_

Darrell Kauthen sighed as he packed his files, intent upon getting them into safer hands before he was caught.

Sally Anderson had been entirely convincing as an introverted young abductee, he thought angrily. He'd been lucky that he'd trusted his instincts about her, lucky that he had got even the vaguest inkling of what she was doing, lucky that, though she'd obviously been immune to the normal hypnosis he'd been using early on, she had had no defenses against the more seductive, more powerful type he had begun to use when he started the actual programming.

He'd been lucky.

She would be getting rid of all of it, right now--all the evidence, herself included. She had never sent the tapes to her superiors, the plan being that she'd keep them all together, ready to turn over to the authorities when she'd gathered enough information to take him into custody. When she had fulfilled the post-hypnotic suggestions he'd planted, she'd be gone, as would all of the proof the government had been trying to amass.

She'd been smooth, he thought angrily, as he packed up the last of the files and prepared to leave. But she didn't know the truth. Her superiors had lied to her, telling her only what they  _wanted_  her to know.

And that had been their downfall--and her demise.

At least he had a chance now to get himself out, if his luck held. They would investigate her suicide, surely--especially with what they knew about him and his kind--but by the time they found out about it, he would be gone.

The files packed, Kauthen walked to the phone, ready to call a taxi so that he could disappear cleanly, as he had from every other crime scene--always long before  _they_  had become aware of his location.

He had dialed only half the number before he heard the sound of his front door crashing open. Grabbing a gun from his bureau drawer, Kauthen walked silently toward the entryway.

As he reached it, a hand came out of the shadows by the door, pushing him up against the wall roughly. The voice was hard gravel in his ear, as he heard the telltale sound of an icepick slipping out of its sheath. "Where are the files, Dr. Kauthen?"

"I--I don't have them!" Kauthen said quickly.

"Where  _are_  they?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

The ugly, massive man behind him lost patience, and Kauthen felt the quiet speed of death as the icepick slid into the base of his skull.

His luck had finally run out.

* * *

_En Route to Rattleby, AZ  
6:15 PM MST_

"Mulder, I don't understand this," Scully said quietly, reading through the file for the fiftieth time since they had boarded the plane at National. They were in their rental car now, speeding across the flat, featureless roads of Arizona, just half an hour outside of Rattleby.

It was too far away for comfort.

Mulder was pushing the car well beyond its endurance in the blazing heat of an Indian Summer, but he couldn't have cared less. The one thing that his mind had kept returning to, as they'd made their way across the country, was the almost blissful looks on the faces of Cohn's previous victims.

That, and Sal Menschner's smile...

"What would Sal have to do with this kind of operation?" Scully continued, looking up at her partner, trying to hide the obvious worry in her voice. "She's a pathologist, for God's sake, not an active agent."

"I don't know, Scully," he finally replied. "All I know is that there's something more going on here than Goldman was willing to tell me. Sal probably doesn't know even half the story behind this--whatever it is."

Scully sat quietly for a time, thinking. She'd always thought of Sal as such a young kid--though she herself was barely two years older than the woman. Sal Menschner was a... a tech-head--and damn proud of it. Scully couldn't believe that the young pathologist could have gotten herself into this kind of situation.

As they headed into the outskirts of the tiny town of Rattleby, she turned back to Mulder. "So what do  _you_  think is going on?"

He didn't answer for a moment, intent on following the poorly marked roads that headed toward the apartment building that Sal had been set up in. "I don't know, Scully... There's some piece of the puzzle that I'm missing here."

* * *

_Washington, D.C.  
8:20 PM EST_

He hung up the phone with a grim smile on his face, raising a cigarette to his wrinkled lips and taking a long, relaxed drag.

Things were well in hand--for once. The files had been retrieved, and another of the clones was dead. The files were vital. They were another of the many puzzle pieces that the Consortium had been putting together for decades, trying to predict the opposition's ultimate plan.

And these files, documentaries of a hundred different abductees-- _their_  abductees, not his--were a very big puzzle piece indeed.

* * *

_Rattleby, AZ  
6:53 PM MST_

Mulder pulled up to the apartment building with a screech of tires. Scully was out of the car before him, running for the door.

Just inside, an old woman stood, keeping watch over a young man who was just moving into one of the downstairs apartments. She turned, startled by the agents' frantic entry. "Can I help you?" she asked coldly.

The young woman yanked a badge from her pocket. "I need to know where Sarah Anderson's apartment is--quickly!"

Caroline Thurber looked at the badge warily. "Is Sally in some sort of trouble?" she asked dubiously.

"Not from us, ma'am," The tall man beside her replied, stepping forward, an almost pleading look in his hazel eyes. "Where can we find her?"

Caroline was already heading for the stairs. "Apartment 3C. Is something wrong? You said she wasn't in any trouble..."

The agents mounted the steps behind her, as Caroline took them faster than she had in years. These agents seemed concerned for Sally--which meant that, somehow, that precious little girl had gotten into  _some_  sort of trouble.

They reached the door, and the young redheaded woman knocked on it loudly. "Sal?" she called, a touch of desperation in her voice. "Sal, it's Dana. Open up."

She tried the door, grimacing with an exasperated sigh when she found it locked. She turned on the pudgy old woman behind her, but Caroline was already pulling the master keys from her pocket.

What they saw when the door opened was enough to stop all their hearts.

Sal Menschner sat silently at the window, one foot out onto the fire escape...

Her hands--and the knife they held--were covered in blood.

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

Scully froze in the doorway, staring at her friend, barely hearing Caroline's gasp behind her, scarcely noticing that Mulder had moved in to flank her. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

Sal had always been a methodical woman--and she seemed to be just as methodical about her own destruction.

On the inside of the window, on a little table, sat a box of audio tapes. On the outside, sat a metal trashcan, tendrils of smoke rising from it, the smell of burning plastic wafting sickeningly into the room. And straddled between the two, sat Sal Menschner, knife in hand. With it, she was calmly destroying the tapes, running the blade through them to damage the magnetic strip inside, before dropping them quietly into the fire.

As Scully watched in quiet horror, Sal's knife hand slipped, gouging the blade deeply into her other palm--as, judging from the blood, it had obviously done many times before. Scully took a deep breath, and stepped forward carefully.

"Sal?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Sal looked up, her sunny smile a chilling sight in the face of the violence she wrought. "Hi, Dana!" Her voice--so normal, so terrifyingly  _normal_ \--almost brought tears to Scully's eyes. "What are you guys doing here?"

"We could ask you the same question," Mulder replied, watching carefully as his partner inched further into the room, and motioning the now weeping Caroline to stay where she was. "We thought you were in Georgia."

Sal shook her head, a bit of guilt coming to her slightly glassy eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you guys," she said apologetically. "It was such an important operation, though."

Scully had reached the over-stuffed chair, not ten feet from where Sal sat. Her voice was studied calm. "Sal... Give me the knife."

As she had always done, Sal saw the joke where it was least intended. Her peal of laughter, every bit as genuine as any Scully had ever heard from her, struck at the older agent's heart. "You can have it when I'm done, Dana," Sal told her jokingly, a smile still in her eyes. "I won't be needing it then." She looked down at the almost empty box of tapes on the table with a sigh. "I'm nearly done with the tapes now, anyway."

" _Then_  will you give me the knife?" Scully asked, willing her voice not to shake.

"I've got to get rid of all the evidence first, Dana," Sal told her seriously, consigning yet another tape to the flames.

"You don't  _have_  to, Sal," Mulder said, moving closer.

"I  _do!_ " Sal insisted, picking up the last of the tapes, the knife slipping twice in her anger, opening more wounds in her hand, before it hit the center of the tape. She twisted it almost viciously, cutting through the magnetic strip in a number of places before dropping the tape into her makeshift incinerator.

Scully watched her friend closely, as the younger woman looked at the burning tapes, satisfied, and stood up on the fire escape beside the fire. Scully saw an opening, and took it, diving through the large open window and grabbing at Sal's knife hand.

The movement seemed finally to drive Sal to action, and she pushed violently at her friend in the cramped confines of the wrought-iron deck. Scully hit the iron bars that served as the deck's floor hard, her impact knocking the burning trashcan on its side, half of it's smoldering contents dropping to the deck one floor below.

"I have to do this, Dana!" Sal cried, not so much upset as exasperated.

Scully looked up at her from her place on the metal flooring, entreaty in her eyes. "No you don't, Sal. You  _don't._  You can stop this right now."

"No!" Sal had the sound of a petulant child in her voice as she raised the knife slightly. She was a pathologist, and she knew of a hundred different ways that a knife could kill a human being. Her left hand nearly unresponsive from the slashings it had received, Sal tried to grip the knife two-handed, preparing the thrust. It wouldn't hurt, she wouldn't even feel it...

And everything would be like it was before...

Before Manhattan...

 

A sob from inside the apartment distracted her slightly, and she turned to see Caroline Thurber at the window, her tear-filled eyes pleading the younger woman to stop.

But she couldn't. This was the way it was supposed to be, she told herself firmly. This was the way it would end--

She was caught off-guard by the redhead who had been sprawled before her, and Scully was up, with her hands on the knife, before Sal could react. The taller woman grunted slightly, pushing Scully back with all her strength.

Two things happened in such quick succession that the actual series of events was forever lost on Sal. The violence of her push sent her friend smashing into the railing of the fire escape, while at the same time, the recoil drove the knife deeply into her own vitals. She barely felt the shaft bury into her up to the hilt--

She was too busy watching her friend in horror, as the railing broke behind her, and Scully fell...

 

"Dana!"

Sal's scream lacked the punch it might have had, as she slumped back, all but tumbling over the other railing at her end of the fire escape. She tried to stand, tried to go to the edge to look down, but her strength failed her, and she lay quiet, feeling no pain as her blood ran out between her fingers.

As Scully fell, Mulder had been climbing out onto the metal deck, intent on stopping Sal before she could use the knife to best advantage. Now, he ran to the edge, looking down, the horror on his face suddenly cooling as he saw his partner lying just one floor below him, on the slightly larger second floor landing.

"Scully?" He called worriedly.

"I'm okay," she told him, more a gasp than a whisper. "What about Sal?"

Mulder turned back toward the window, as Scully rose and started to make her way slowly up the ladder. Caroline Thurber had crawled out onto the metal deck, and now held Sal's head carefully in her lap, running one hand through the young woman's dark hair, as her other hand held the phone.

"I need an ambulance," she told the operator tearfully, supplying her name and the address. "Please hurry," she whispered as she hung up, her right hand now free to run gently down her honey's cheek. "Please..."

* * *

_Materson County Hospital  
9:45 pm MST_

"Hey," Scully said tiredly, announcing herself to her partner as she walked into the waiting room. He looked up at her, relief and concern on his face as she repositioned her sling to try to get some measure of comfort from it. The fall had been relatively minor, but she had broken her arm on landing. Nothing serious, her eyes assured Mulder quietly.

"Any word?" she asked, settling uncomfortably into the chair beside him.

Mulder shook his head. "Nothing yet. She's still in surgery."

They were silent a moment before Scully commented dully, "I'd better call Brian... And her father..." She sighed deeply. "God, and  _Skinner..._  What the hell happened, Mulder?"

He gritted his teeth. "I don't know. I called the local police, and they went out to Kauthen's house," he told her angrily. "There was nothing there, and there'd been signs of a break-in."

"A break-in?" Scully shifted her plastered arm again, and her voice held exasperation. "Damnit, Mulder, what did Sal get herself into?"

"I don't know," Mulder replied. He'd been saying it too damned often of late, he thought sourly as he rose. "But I'm going to find out."

"Where are you going?" Scully asked, rising to follow him.

He shook his head. "I'm going to go check out Kauthen's house." His tone was implacable, clearly not including her in the ride. "Call me the minute you hear something."

* * *

_Kauthen Residence_

Mulder looked around the small ranch house dully. He had no idea what he was looking for. Something-- _anything_ \--to clear up this mystery. Something to explain why a sane young woman would try to kill herself with a smile on her face...

The office Kauthen had set up in the back of the old house was ransacked. Everything that might give any clue as to why the man was killing these people had been taken. With an angry sigh, Mulder moved back into the entryway. They'd left him nothing to find, and Sal couldn't tell him what had happened.

Sal... He sighed deeply this time, a sigh full of sadness. He remembered the look on her face, as she'd lain there, waiting for the ambulance. She was angry with them all, telling them that  _this_  was the way it was supposed to be, that it was okay, that they should call off the damn ambulance and leave her be.

She was one of the most vibrant--indeed, almost manic--people he knew, and to see her reduced to all but begging them to let her die made him sick. His gaze drifted as his thoughts did, and his eyes came to rest on an odd burn on the floor of the entryway. His mind engaged quickly as he stared.

The log in Michigan... He bent down to look at the burn carefully. It wasn't caused by heat... It was corrosive--like acid...

_"some kind of acid, anyway..."_

 

His cellphone was in his hand, his finger hovering over the connect button, when it rang, startling him. He cleared the number he'd been about to call, pushing the button and bringing the phone to his ear. "Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me," Scully said, her tone tired, but not as hopeless as it had been when he'd left the hospital. "Sal's in recovery. The surgery went pretty well, considering." She took a deep breath. "Did you find anything?"

"Yeah," Mulder replied distantly, still fixated on the burn. "But I'm not sure you'll believe what I came up with..."

* * *

_Materson County Hospital  
12:15 AM_

Scully just sat and listened as Mulder told her his theory. She wasn't normally so quiet about theories this outrageous...

But she couldn't think of a more plausible explanation.

"So you think Kauthen was a clone?" Scully asked finally.

Mulder nodded. "It would explain the burns we found... Similar burns were found at two of the Gregors' houses--not to mention on your shoe."

Scully just nodded quietly. As he'd told his story, she'd remembered why the burn in Michigan looked so familiar, had remembered the gelled acid that had eaten through her shoe in Washington a year and a half ago...

And all the hell that had happened afterward.

"So maybe Kauthen  _wasn't_  Cohn," she surprised herself by saying.

"Maybe not," Mulder agreed. "And maybe that means that Goldman knew what they were after all along." His eyes hardened as he decided that he just  _had_  to have a little talk with the bureaucrat about all of this.

Scully met his eyes, worry still clouding hers. "Does that mean Sal knew, too?"

"I doubt it," Mulder replied. He held up the melted remains of two audio tapes--all he'd been able to salvage from Sal's destructive episode. "According to the case file that Goldman gave me in Washington, she was supposed to tape the sessions she had with Kauthen--presumably so they could be used as evidence."

As if the man would ever have gone to trial, Scully thought bitterly. "But how do you know that he was giving you the whole story, Mulder," she asked quietly, damning herself for doubting her friend--but doubting her all the same.

Before Mulder could answer, a nurse walked into the waiting room, standing in the doorway as they turned to her.

"Your friend's awake," she told them quietly. "She'd like to see you."

* * *

_Baltimore, MD_

Robert Goldman sat silently in his house. His wife was away, visiting friends, and the old Victorian on the outskirts of Baltimore had that empty feeling that inevitably makes people jumpy.

Not that he didn't have good reason to be jumpy anyway. His superiors would find out about Mulder and Scully eventually--regardless of whether they got there in time.

He sipped at his scotch with a sigh. God, if May Menschner died...

Somehow, he'd convinced himself that he wasn't responsible for Larry Hildar's death. It was one of those unavoidable things. But May was one of his own--more than an agent... Almost a daughter.

He hadn't heard from Agent Mulder since the younger man had met him at the Memorial. Not that he expected a courtesy call--not if Mulder had found out what this operation was  _really_  all about.

He knew they'd eliminated Kauthen, knew that the files--or the part of them that the Arizona man had  _had,_  anyway--were in his superior's hands. And, true to form, he'd received no answer from the old bastard about Menschner's whereabouts.

_"we'll bring her back, of course..."_

Like hell! She was dead as far as that cancerous son of a bitch was concerned--by her own hand or theirs--it made no difference.

And Robert supposed, taking another sip of scotch, that he was dead as well. They knew he'd been compromised, simply by bringing one of his own into the operation. And when they found out about the file he'd given Mulder, they'd kill him for sure.

So he waited, gun at his side, for them to come and get him. He wouldn't make it easy for them, but he knew he couldn't stop them. He'd never had a chance--a blindly patriotic man, falling in with the devils he should have been fighting...

He heard the sound of a key gun on his front door, heard the door creak quietly open, and cocked his gun--ready to meet the fate he knew he so richly deserved...

* * *

_Materson County Hospital_

Sal refused to meet their eyes as her friends walked in. She settled instead on staring fixedly at the bandage that encircled her left hand. She'd all but taken off two fingers. The surgeon had been in a few minutes ago, telling her they were "cautiously optimistic" that she'd regain  _most_  of her mobility in the hand, which was going to do a hell of a lot for her career. Autopsies were a little tough one-handed.

She felt a fool. A nearly very  _dead_  fool.

"How are you feeling?" Scully asked quietly, taking a seat beside the bed.

"I'm feeling nothing," Sal replied sullenly, and knew that it was almost the truth. She let the silence continue long past the point where it should have been broken. Let  _them_  break it. Made no difference to her.

She found the hidden joke again, and smiled bitterly. Being convinced to kill herself had turned out to be so embarrassing, she wanted to die.

"Sal," Scully began carefully. "We were sent out here by Robert Goldman. He told us--"

"The same horseshit he told me, probably," Sal broke in coldly.

Scully fell silent, exchanging a worried look with her partner. The nurse had said that Sal wanted to see them. All she  _really_  seemed to want to do was beat herself up.

Scully opened her mouth to speak again, but Sal beat her to it, turning to stare, not at Scully's face, but at the cast that encased the older woman's arm.

"Broken?" she asked dully.

Scully shrugged, a little painfully. "It's nothing."

Sal's eyes hardened. "Must be nice to be so nonchalant about your best friend nearly killing you."

Unbidden, an image came to Scully's mind--Mulder, at the wrong end of her gun, looking stricken as she accused him of the most horrible things. Involuntarily, she glanced up at him, seeing in his darkened eyes that the memory, for him, was just as fresh.

So Scully told Sal what Mulder had told  _her_  only a few short months ago. "Sal... None of this was your fault."

"Oh, no?" Sal asked bitterly. "I was asked to take this assignment because I was so 'strong-willed'!" She quieted, returned her gaze to her own ruined hand. "Guess you  _have_  to be strong-willed to try to kill your friends."

Mulder looked at her for a moment, his eyes suddenly becoming not just dark, but hard, too. "Sal, if you want to do this, could we go?" he asked coldly. "I've got better things to do."

She looked up angrily, meeting his eyes for the first time, and froze. She had wanted to tell him to can the tough-guy crap, had wanted to tell him just where he could stick his reverse psychology...

Now, as she looked into his eyes, saw their concern masked by forced anger, all she wanted to tell him was the truth.

"I'm scared," she whispered.

Scully nodded, taking Sal's uninjured hand and running her fingers over it soothingly. "It'll be okay, Sal."

Sal dropped her eyes from Mulder's finally, her gaze coming to rest on her best friend's face. "God, Dana..." she whispered in a tortured voice. "I'm so sorry..."

And with that, and the forgiving smile that her friend gave her, Sal began to feel something other than self-loathing for the first time since she'd woken up. She didn't try to stop the tears, didn't try to hold back the sobs that sent waves of pain through her damaged body... She wanted to feel all of it--wanted never to have that deadly, peaceful non-feeling that Kauthen had given her...

She wanted to feel alive.

* * *

_Washington, D.C._

"It's been taken care of, sir," the short, vicious-looking man assured him. With a nod, the thug was dismissed.

The old man leaned back in his chair, slowly inhaling the smoke from his cigarette. Goldman had been taken care of. He wasn't surprised that the man had broken. It was inevitable, really. He'd been weak, like so many others.

Now there was only one problem remaining--the agent. Mulder had proven to be a thorn in his side once again. Had Menschner died, the secrets would have died with her. He knew she had powerful friends--an Assistant Director of the FBI quite notable among them--but there would have been no trail to follow, now that Kauthen had... disappeared. Had she died, it would have been one more of those little mysteries that life was full of.

Now, though, she was a dangerous liability. They couldn't just kill her--not now, when Mulder probably had at least an inkling of what was going on...

There had to be a way to keep the secrets, he thought, stubbing out his cigarette.

He'd think of something...

* * *  
The End

 


End file.
